affinity
by the milliner's rook
Summary: AU. Love, its romantics, its cynics, and everything that exists in between.


_New writing project yay! Okay, so I wanted to write something Momo-centric, but the more I planned for this fic and thought about it, it became Karin-centric and Toushirou-centric due to the writing style. IDK. I wanted to write about love and selfishness and friendship. One of the things most interesting to me about Momo is how she's perceived as selfish in her friendship with Toushirou. And how that's seen as such a negative thing. Also that she's a really shojo heroine._

_One more thing: I'm not entirely certain what the final pairing is going to be, but the pairings included in this fic are Momo/Karin, Karin/Toushirou and Toushirou/Momo._

* * *

_affinity  
_**one**_  
_

_**side a: park bench ice cream**_

* * *

Momo falls in love for the first time when she is thirteen. She falls in love with the turn of the page, soft and soundless and eager to know more. She devours the words so quickly that her hands shake and she cuts herself against the edge and the pain is _sharp_-and-sudden like a pin-prick that she doesn't even notice until much later, too immersed with the neatly printed words and romanticism of the world spun so beautifully in her hands.

She loves it, the trail of dust that she follows, the smell of the worn down paper, the trials and tribulations of love and hate. She chases the happy ending with her imagination, wondering and fearing what happens next, as the main characters bicker, stomp and cross their arms across their chest, turning away as she can hear their voices _so loudly_ in her mind as they raise their voices into shrieks and shouts, too stubborn to give in to anyone's perspective but their own. She sees them in vivid detail, the gentle eyes narrowed into slits and the cherry mouth twisting words into bullets meant for the heart as they leave the most important things unsaid, she sees the strong sturdy shoulders tense so much that it affects the way they stand, and they reach for each other in hate and love and meet midway with a kiss.

Sometimes she stops the novel midway when that happens, because she wants to hope that the book ends happily, and just because they kiss for the first time doesn't mean that everything is going to be okay. But that comes later, when Momo learns that sometimes the first guy isn't the right one, and that the course of true love never did run smooth. Sometimes it comes from the place expected least. But she closes the book and _hopes_ with everything that she can muster, because her heart is beat-beat-_beating_ and there's nothing more Momo wants than a happy ending and she isn't ready to know how the story ends.

Momo falls in love with the poetry of words, ugly-harsh-beautiful-and-alluring, she falls in love with the strength of character and paragons of goodness and humanity and gains a paper cut on the tips of her fingers and she learns-and-loves, too late and never noticing the drawn blood until it stains the paper, a blot of red ink spreading on her paper skin that catches her eye and the pain exists like an echo in the back of her mind, remerging whenever she puts pressure on her bandaged hand, flicking away and she makes a silent promise to herself that she'll be more careful next time.

She never is.

Her heart bruises easily, and the words she reads are imprinted against her ribs, there to be cruel and comforting, like plasters wrapped around her fingers, and Momo hisses as an ache builds in her chest, and she falls, again and again for different books and different words and different ugliness and different beauty, always, it feels, for the first time.

* * *

Momo knows him long before she meets him.

It's hard not to notice the boy with a frown on his face and blue eyes and white hair and that he lives in the same street to her. He is small and tiny and his mouth is always pulled into a downwards twist. She notices it more than his hands buried deep in his pockets, and when she thinks back on it, he does that _a lot_. He frowns even more than that.

Everyone avoids him. They stare at him. They talk about him behind his back.

She wishes she was braver so she could go up and talk to him.

But he ignores them all, lost in thought, thinking about something that isn't the mystery of his name, and he drifts away from all the boys and girls who look at him and call him funny names, oblivious to it all. He becomes something unattainable. He brushes them all away, smoothing out the creases of his too big clothes that reach past his knees and past his elbows, and he looks up and faces only his grandmother. They trade secrets in quiet murmurs, too soft to be heard by anyone. The old lady laughs and ruffles his scruffy white hair, and he frowns even more, and she smiles in return.

Momo was ten when she first sees him, a picture of clumsiness and girlishness and stumbling on her feet, blinking too fast and trying to catch up to hold her mother's hand, and then she turned away. Her pretty pink shoes were speckled brown by mud, and she doesn't care half as much as she thought she would because today was a sunny day and the grass was sweet and it's fun to have a picnic. She forgot about him in an instant.

Until she saw him again, this boy who she had never approached because everyone else shied away, leaving him alone in the playground, and then she remembered and it made her so _mad_ but she didn't—_doesn't_ know what to do about it either.

So she stomped her feet, and tried to think of something to say, but nothing sounded right. By the time it has, too much time has passed and Momo lets it be.

* * *

Love is a constant.

There's an entire spectrum of colours used, Momo learns, the more she reads and learns and consumes, seeing how characters change on the paper-white-and-ink-black page, but love remains the same. Constant and bright and sparkling in her hands. There's a rainbow that has more than seven shades and each shade can describe a single person and the emotions they carry. Their appearances change in each book she reads, but she's beginning to find a pattern. There's a certain magic that is lost, she realizes, fifteen and resting on her bed, knees pushed up into her chest, being able to predict what will happen next, and successfully too, but there's a certain magic that's gained too, and it's that she believes in happy endings and that true love exists, and by the end of the novel, the characters will know it too, believe it as much as she does.

Eventually she recognises the formula and changes the genre, not because she's sick of romance, because she loves romance and watching the characters fall in love in their beautiful, perfect, imperfect way, but she's tired of her daddy's eyes when he looks at her and tells her with disdain, her tiny hands wrapped in his heavy fingers, that _there's more to books than romance_.

So Momo reads other books. Books where maybe love isn't the most important thing, but saving the world is. Books where science fiction and technology are so different to what she knows. Books that she can't possibly imagine that could happen even in the future. Books that deal in tragedies, and she weeps at those, because she gets attached to the main character anyway, and she didn't see him getting the happy ending that she wanted him to have. Books where she giggles and laughs and tosses them into the air and then catches them because what just happened was so utterly ridiculous that she has to reread the sentence, the paragraph, the entire page again before she can really trust her eyes and grin because she can and she is _happy_.

There are more books, each as different as the next. Books that tell true events. Books that are about friends and the mysteries they solve. Books that scare her when she invests too much and make her jump and she's terrified when she reads them in the middle of the night but she has to know how the story ends and she can't help but scream, clapping her hand to her mouth, when there's a sudden thud and she knows in her heart of hearts that there's been a murder and not her mother tripping over the vacuum cleaner because she's too tired to switch the lights on.

Eventually though, Momo returns to her romance novels, no matter what Tou-chan says. She tries to imagine herself as the characters, and stares at the mirror, imagining her brown hair as green instead, because perhaps it might match her eyes, and she bursts into laughter because the idea is so wonderful and silly and she loves it wholeheartedly. She tugs her plaits, her silky brown hair that slips through her fingers, and decides that she likes her hair just _fine._ But if it were green, oh if it were green, well wouldn't that be something?

She changes and imagines herself taller, shorter, older, younger, thinner, fatter, so different until she can't recognize herself any more, and she _sighs_, so deeply that she is sure that there is no more air in her lungs, because in each variation of her daydreams, she finds the person just for her.

* * *

What Momo knows about love is this: it exists.

It's in her hands, warm and soft and solid, radiantly seeping through their touch: caught up in bubbles of laughter and the brilliant light of an orange-red-yellow-pink sunset. It is bright and beautiful and better than any book she has ever known. It holds on tightly and laces itself in between the gaps of her fingers and theirs.

It lifts ups her in the air, and Momo _laughs_, five-and-six, seven-and-never-too-old-for-_this_, in the grip of her parents hands, and they swing her back and forth, and she runs up into the air with them, pushing off the ground with her feet and her wiggling toes, giggling because she's about to burst into bubbles and because she knows that the fall won't hurt her.

She knows love best in the way Kaa-chan and Tou-chan look at each other: soft smiles and a roll of eyes, exasperation never too far behind. He holds her tight, his arms wrapped around her waist like he's never going to let her go, her head buried in his shoulder, silky locks splayed down her back and the creases of his rolled up sleeves, and there's so much delight floating in the air. The grass is sharp and green, tall and sweet-scented, dirt dusted on Momo's fingertips, and not a white rabbit in sight.

But this is love: the curve of lips after a kiss, the press of _I love you_ etched deep in the crinkle of their eyes, how they tell each other every single day. How they tell _her_, their adorable little girl, cheeks round and rose-pink, and make her giggle in delight.

_Tell me a story_, Momo murmurs sleepily, lying on her mother's lap, so pretty in a flowery dress, closing her eyes when she feels slender-smooth fingers card through her hair, and she sighs happily. _Tell me about love_, she means, _tell me how it happened to you._

Her daddy doesn't like romance stories, but he likes that one. His voice rumbles deep in his chest, and he tickles her under her knees, knowing what she wants, and Momo wishes upon the shiniest star in the darkest sky, wishes that she could have a love story almost as pretty, almost as lovely, and hers. She falls asleep, listening to the gruff lull of his voice, never knowing how the story ends.

* * *

She finds out much later that his name is Hitsugaya Toushirou.

He spends his time frowning at idiots, or, people he thinks are idiots, and most of the time there isn't much difference.

Momo is dismayed the day that she learns that she's one of them.

* * *

That, however, comes later, when she's tripping over her feet again, falling over non-existent rocks in the ground, when in actuality she forgot to tie her shoelaces again, school books scattered everywhere, and the only thing he does is glare before he picks up her books and waits for her to get up of her own accord and she notices for the first time that they're neighbours. Not the next-house-neighbours, but the kind of neighbours that live on the same street, and no wonder he always looked so familiar, and she's blushing because maybe she should have realized that sooner, and he's frowning because it's what he's known all along: she's an idiot.

(Then she laughs, as she stands up on her two feet, shoelaces tied into bows, Momo laughs because _of course_ it would be_ her_, someone exactly like her who would overlook something as obvious as _this_, and Toushirou would find it so _stupidly obvious_ and she wouldn't. It's so silly but actually that's something so typically her, so idiotic and true, that she can't help but laugh at herself and grin just as brightly as before, fingers lightly placed over her mouth. It just makes sense to her, just as it doesn't make sense to him.)

* * *

High school passes in a daze, a chattering burble of laughter and miscommunication, forgotten by flicking pages and misremembering character names for friends' names, and spending a lot of free time in the library. Oh, there are fights and falling outs and there's a month when Momo exists on anger, burning bright and white like the hottest star because she knows she's _right_ and Cirucci is _wrong_ but eventually one of them gives in with the promise of the latest movie adaptation to watch, and then there are sleep-overs and makeovers and then Momo grins because there's no other place she'd rather be than here.

She blinks and she misses it. That's how friends happen. They tend to creep up on her while she mulls over the next book she wants to read, except Cirucci Thunderwitch was the opposite of everything that Momo thought she believed in, colliding and sending dust in the air, aftermaths of how she strolled down corridors, head held high.

Cirucci happened like her surname: she did everything loudly and brash and bright, thunder quick, lightning sharp, cutting corners with the edge of her smirk and the glint of her teeth. There's a dangerous curve to her cheek, and it's smeared across her face like war paint, laughing abrasively when people rhyme _witch_ with _bitch_, tongue lashed with cruel words and even crueller tempers.

But she catches people's attention, and she was interesting in the way smoke and mirrors exist in a haunted portrait. She made herself look like a doll with knee-high boots and short skirts and t-shirts, and Momo loves her and hates her, teenage-jealous of the way Cirucci put on her airs, like the world spins in the centre of her hand. Cirucci is confident and bold and one day in class, informally leaning over to Momo, and asked-not-quite-demanded, with her painted hands curled under her sharp chin, what she was doing after school, deciding that they'd be friends just like _that._ She dug her nails in her arms too deep, left marks of crescent moons on the insides of her wrist, and sometimes, as Cirucci dragged Momo through the clothes store, it was all she could do to hold on and not be swept away.

They clashed often, and frequently Cirucci _twisted_ her ebony hair into pigtails between her fingers, a red mess furious across her cheeks, as they fumed at each other about anything and everything, no matter too big or small to cause an argument between them, but somehow Momo liked that. How she rolled words in her mouth like weapons, knowing how to strike and cut ventricles as they got older, and how they learnt to forgive each other before the process began again, the retorts more painful, quicker to break, quicker to mend. It was a reminder that flesh and bone could cut just as deeply as paper words.

It was fun, it was unexpected, and slowly, Momo began to rely less on books, though she always kept one in her bag should the need arise.

Cirucci complained a lot, but then, Momo discovers later, maybe she's just drawn to those kinds of people. The grumpy, the angry, the ones who leave cinder in their absence, and the ones who leave the taste of ash and blood in her mouth with the prettiest smiles; _those_ were the kind of people she liked best.

* * *

All the leading men and leading ladies a little bit like that, if Momo's being honest and admits that's why she likes them. They're such forces of nature, hurricanes, tidal waves, and earthquakes that she wonders if she could be even a teeny bit like that.

She wonders if she could ever possibly understand what it means to be so _brave._

* * *

And maybe her heart breaks a little, when she learns for the first time that Christine didn't end up with Erik. Maybe it breaks a lot.

It might have been a classic tale, a musical, a mystery novel, a movie, but no one told her that was how the story _ends_.

Momo cries for days, because Erik was Christine's angel of music, and she sang only for him. The strings of Apollo's lyre had tied them together so tight that it might as well be red ribbons linking them together by melodies and the trading of souls; a blood trade, affecting them even in their separation. There may have been a happy ending, but it's not the ending Momo _wanted._

Her friends look at her, some with scorn and others with sympathy. _It's just fiction_ hangs in the air sometimes; she reads it like flickering airwaves and in their incredulous catches of breath as they try and think of something else to say. _It's make-believe. How could you make it real?_

But Momo listens to Christine sing, hears the organ play its haunting tune, and her lungs flutter like baby birds learning to flap their wings, trying to imitate the tune they hear, and she thinks, _how could you not?_

* * *

Her mother used to read her stories, and that was how Momo used to dream.

She was the princess in the faraway castle, holding her teddy bear with stitched up buttons for eyes, and she waited for a prince to wait for her because that's what princesses were supposed to do. She'd wait on sun and stars and moon until the sky was torn down by fire and ruby arrows and brick by brick the castle became undone, torn apart by thorns wedged in her heart and become wrecked in despair and there was no sign of a happy ending in sight.

Her daddy would laugh then, emerging from the shadows, quietly slipping through the doorframe, because he liked the sound of mummy's voice, and he laughed when Momo sighed in relief, knowing that he wasn't some big scary dragon, because that's what books provided that everything else couldn't: an _ending._ He'd spit the word out and make a shape with his mouth like he couldn't find the words in order to explain how wrong it was, and it was only much later, much later, when Momo was tall and thin and willowy and worn grief like her favourite pair of shoes and the answer stared her at the face and rain down her cheeks because it was just like tears only with a lot less salt.

A happily ever after, he thought with a furrowed brow, wasn't an ending. It was the middle. It was a time to close the book and think: _I am satisfied. I am happy. This is enough._

Death, Momo weeps, wet watery tears falling freely from her face, soaked to the bone from the rain in her head, the pathetic fallacy that should have been, closing her eyes and sees stormy black clouds, feels thunder rumbling in her chest until she forgets how to breathe, and she sees the rain fall in the darkness, hears the lightning whip in her mind, at her aunt's funeral, and she is scared, so scared of death, lightning-quick, scalding-bright, instant and painful and final, was what her daddy was trying to say all along.

Death, now _that_ was an ending.

* * *

Her mother stopped reading her stories at night, and Momo forgot all about the forgotten princesses left in their towers, dust collecting like broken, half-filled teacups. She didn't write stories about princesses becoming their own saviours and being their own heroes and going off own their own adventures. She didn't dream, remembering nothing when she woke up to blue skies. She just forgot because she was too tired to anything but hold onto her teddy bear, and bury her head in school books and friends and _work-and-play._

* * *

And then, one day, she is thirteen, and she picks up a book, and learns about the art of words, and Momo falls in love with quiet moments, late nights, and the ink black phrases printed across her hand as she falls asleep and dreams of worlds much more beautiful than the world she sees before her now in midwinter.

One day she is fifteen, and she blinks, wondering how that happened, her fingertips stained with words she has traced on fading yellowing pages until she is certain they have left marks on her, impermeable in sleep, and someone is tugging her forward, and flicking her on her forehead and telling her that she _has to study_, and Momo glares because reading is so much easier. And time, strangely, _oh_, so strangely, time has passed without her realizing it, and she is mournful of all the less enjoyable books she now has to read that consists of forging the future that is the path that she decides to walk.

It's an unopened book, one that she doesn't know at all except how the title has her name, and the contents have eaten away like a mouse to cheese, passages forgotten as she tries to recall how it all began, how it continued, and afterwards until _now,_ in the future, in the present day, and her fingers tremble, hovering over the keyboard, thinking, wondering, so scared and uncertain, what should happen next when she is terrified by merely thinking about it.

* * *

When she thinks about it, when Momo really _thinks_ about it, about these days of hanging out with Cirucci is lying on her bed, hair splayed out like ink run dry, black tendrils turned into rivulets separated by the creases of the sheets, before she blinks and sees Cirucci's face, amethyst eyes gleaming, a smirk daintily reclined over the stretch of plush lips, staring above her, before she leans closer and murmurs, _let me make you pretty-prettier-prettiest_, are the days when she doesn't feel like a wallflower. Those are the days when she feels lazy and relaxed, and giddy warmth pools in her stomach, because she has to _stay still_ and Cirucci is surly, because Momo won't do as she says, so she has to force her thumb on her chin and keep her _still_ and in place, while she muses about today's project is.

She stays still and watches beauty unfurl, smoothed by cosmetics and in Cirucci's hands, Momo flourishes, heart pounding like a steady drum.

And sometimes, when she looks in the mirror, a butterfly after chrysalis, she doesn't recognise herself, and she is beautiful.

* * *

It's inevitable, Momo thinks, that eventually everyone would realize that Cirucci is so pretty. It's inevitable, Momo knows, that she would be left behind.

Boys start to notice, and leave letters in her locker, requesting that they meet during lunch, after school, behind the gym, next to the swimming pool, just beside the bicycle racks, the variations go on and on. Cirucci bares her teeth and laughs, the handwritten paper creasing in her hands, and she presses so hard between her knuckle and her thumb that Momo's afraid it might tear.

_Leave you behind? _Cirucci repeats lazily, like she's mincing up clouds with her voice, laid back on the cool tarmac and legs outstretched, skirt hitched, gazing upwards like she was swallowing the sky, _why would I ever do that?_

"You're plenty pretty," Cirucci says, turning to face Momo, raising her hand, reaching to take out her hair bobble, and her brown hair comes out in tumbles and tangles, curling around Cirucci's slender fingers, and Momo gulps, feeling like a mouse caught in the playful paws of a cat and wonders how Cirucci smiles like she knows exactly what thoughts have been running through her head, something obscene and lewd and vulgar. The tips of her nails scrape Momo's jaw, a flush of red beginning to glaze over Momo's cheeks, and Cirucci leers, like she's about to tear through _her_ instead of the sky, murmuring in husky tones. "You are."

* * *

They drift apart anyway.

It's not as sudden as everyone said it would be. They don't cut each other off. It's not a big fight like everyone predicted, even though they do that often, bickering about the small things and the big things, and remaining friends anyway. It just happens, like dandelions spores picked up by the breeze, let go in pieces and by another person's hand blowing-blowing_-blowing_, and something still remains, nail deep and razor sharp like the knife's edge of a cat's smile, the blood of ladybugs on the sidewalk, perfume lingering in the air.

They never stop being friends, but they do stop spending so much time together. Because Cirucci says _yes_ once to a date, then twice, then three times, and then she's hanging out with boys all the time, and then Sung-Sun becomes her new best friend and Momo starts to listen to her parent's advice and try to study, study _hard_, and there's no better place to study than in the library. Their shopping trips become irregular, erratic, and Momo misses the closeness that they had.

But sometimes—

Sometimes it's not like that, and their eyes meet across hallways, and Momo can smile and walk up beside her and start up a conversation, or Cirucci surprises her by taking her by the hand and twirling Momo around and smirking and telling Momo all the details of last night's date and it's like they haven't drifted apart at all, and it's like this all the time, so easy and familiar and what best friends are for.

* * *

They meet like this:

There's an avalanche of books and they are at opposite sides of the wreckage.

Momo's head is swimming with pastel soft colours, she can _feel_ the polluted air spark at her skin, she can _hear_ the anguish in the sister's voice, and then suddenly—there's a _crash_, and the spell is broken, the book is just a book, and her attention is lost, ears sparking at the intrusion—_too-much-too-loud-too-real_ and she looks up with a flinch.

(She knows instinctively that it exists outside her head, and she stands up without meaning too, chair scraping with a screech, shutting the fantasy novel and leaving it on the table, her eyes darting in the sound's direction.)

Everything is so much _louder_ in a library.

The floor is scattered with books with open spines and dog-eared pages, and in a hurry, a heroine rescuing her paper hearted heroes, Momo takes them in her hand and protects them, closing the books so their stories remain unsung, carrying as much as she can. There's dust in her nose, dust in the air and in the light that slinks past the window and half-closed curtains, and Momo is so sure she is going to sneeze, wrinkling her nose until the feeling passes, and the books are steady in her hands, safe from harm.

_Here_, she says, placing the books on the trolley, her voice a murmur so the no-talking-rule stays unbroken. _Let me help._

The librarian ignores her, frowning at the books who don't know how to fly and land themselves back in the trolley, and with a deep heave of his chest, he sets about his task of picking them up and putting them back in a neat stack, letting her be. Quietly, Momo aids him with the rest of the fallen books, putting them back where they should be, and remembers that this is the boy that she watched from afar, Hitsugaya Toushirou, blue eyed, white haired, frowning at everyone who crosses into his line-of-sight and here she finally has an opportunity to say _hello_.

* * *

He doesn't seem to talk much. He doesn't seem to care much either.

But somehow, he makes room for her. She calls his name at lunch, pulling up a chair for him to sit next to her, and he obliges, though he looks at her warily at first, then sits down with a heavy handed sigh. Later, she gets used to the sighs found deep in his chest, lungfuls of air roaming in the caverns of his hollow ribs, and Momo listens to his heartbeat, so steady, so constant, and falls asleep to it. But initially, she smiles, beaming when he joins her and starts a conversation.

When she stops by the library, he's perfectly content to recommend a good book. Though usually he did it while glaring fiercely at the rabble-rousers who dare disturb the silence under his watch.

* * *

His nickname comes about by accident. Not so much by accident, really, as much as a stutter on her tongue and by then, he doesn't notice, and just lets it be. So she sticks to it, absent-minded and when she's wide awake, or frustrated because she can't answer the question right, and fiddling with her pen between her fingers that drives him mad because she's not paying attention and she's pouting because this is _not_ _her fault_. Only her, Momo notices, feeling a rush of pride, and his grandmother get to call him Shirou-chan.

* * *

She likes Hitsugaya Takiko.

She's sweet and sturdy and there's something sharp about her that keeps Momo on her toes. There's a whimsicality on her face that Momo can't find in Shirou-chan, but other things, small mannerisms, the way her lips curl when she's about to state something, or the way she observes something, silently taking it in, reminds Momo of Shirou-chan so much that it's almost eerie.

There's a hidden story there, Momo knows, or maybe it's not so hidden, because Shirou-chan is always truthful, if a little bit reluctant to share his secrets. But she asks, sometimes, and he tells her, sometimes, vague and nondescript, and Momo never pries for too long. She learns about muted smiles watching them interact, and that he smiles far often than she thought, it's not an impossibility, but it happens discreetly and when he thinks that no one is looking. But that's a secret she won't tell.

"Why don't you stay awhile?" Takiko asks, one day, and Momo grins at her, says _yes, I'd like that._

Because she catches books scattered on the chairs, on the kitchen table top, and she longs to read those too. But Toushirou scowls at her, and she backs away, until he rolls his eyes and tells her so seriously, _he is always serious_, that they are here to study.

* * *

The thing is, Momo grows up.

It happens when she doesn't realize it, when she's looking the other direction, head too stuck in books and clouds and trying on lipstick for the first time and licking her lips too much because she likes the sweet taste of strawberry. It happens when she is given second hand magazines and skims through the pages, absent-mindedly twirling strands of hair between her fingertips. She lets go of some things and holds onto others.

It happens when she blows the candles out of her birthday cake and doesn't feel a day older than yesterday, but people are smiling and she's smiling back, and the cake is creamy in her mouth and she can taste jam and feel the birthday hat on her head falling past her ears.

It happens when she looks up from her chick flick novels for the first time and asks to repeat the question again because there was nothing more than the words of the book being read in her head to register anything else but a low buzz of another person's voice and there's that question meant to scare her, that's meant to take her out of her books, and _think_, long and hard unless the answer is easy as breathing and she's known it all along.

(But she _doesn't_.)

She doesn't, so she has to _think_. Put away her books and study, set her mouth into a frown and furrow her eyebrows as she worries, thinking-thinking-and-_thinking_ about this question like it's going to define her forever. She's fourteen and scared, and wondering why she has to think about it at all in the first place when she has a lifetime of even more books to read.

"What do you want to do when you grow up?"

The problem is, Momo realizes, pulling out her hair, kicking her legs in the air, feeling like she's screaming silently in her thoughts, because she's read hundred and thousands of pages of infinite possibilities and limitless realities, but she can't do any of them because some of them aren't possible, and others… others, she doesn't want to do.

But the question remains unanswered, and still Momo doesn't know what she _does_ want to do in the future.

* * *

She goes back to that park, where she finds Shirou-chan, where they first met, small and tiny and different as night and day, worlds apart and so young, younger than they are now, and still they are so _young_. She's taller now, but still small, it seems, but with slimmer legs, and less baby fat, bonier arms, and with smaller smiles, and it's strange how much she's changed. It seems, she is a little bit braver than she used to be, because she accomplished at sixteen what she couldn't do at ten. Children are playing, oblivious to her musing, just as bright and malleable as they were the day before.

There are two cones of ice cream in her hands, and with a grin, she calls his name and offers one to him.

He looks at her, teal-green eyes wide, mouth parted open, hair ruffled by the wind, and Momo nearly bursts into laughter because he almost looks like a romance heroine, taken by surprise with such an innocent expression on his face. Instead, her smile softens, just as Shirou-chan relaxes his shoulders, and accepts it with a small smile of his own.

"Aren't you scared?" Momo asks, after she sits down, crossing her legs because she sits like a lady and Toushirou pays her no mind, before he glances at her in a sideways manner of looking that always made her feel more invisible than it should.

"Depends." He answers, slow to answer and slow to turn his head to look at her. "What am I supposed to be scared about?"

Her feet push into the grass, soft and green and bending under the weight of her pretty blue shoes, and Momo nibbles at the corner of her lip and _thinks_, sorting through her fears as fast as she can, and Toushirou waits patiently, licking the remains of the melting ice cream.

"The future. I think." She admits, tentative, because she's not even sure that's the right answer herself. She means to say _whirlwinds, hurricanes, forces-of-nature-that-are-no-match-for-me_ because she hears it in the ripples of her skirt as she smoothes it out, and looks up at him, not knowing what to say.

_Hmm,_ he shrugs, contemplating away, tilting his head until he finds an answer that suits him just fine. "I don't think it matters."

"But _why?_" She shouts, louder than she intends, and her eyes widen. The future is meant to be set in stone, and they're meant to decide right now, and how, Momo wonders, _how_ can she-he-they possibly be okay with something as important as _that?_ How is he not scared and terrified because what exists beyond the current second is a litany of unfinished hopes and dreams.

"Because." Shirou-chan leans back on the park bench and heaves all the air out of his chest. "You worry too much."

"With good reason!"

"You read too many books." He says, like he wasn't the librarian and Momo narrows her eyes at him because she can sense her temper rising, building behind her eyelids like she's about to see red. "It's not that big a deal."

"But—"

"It's fine." Shirou-chan says, no-nonsense and calm and rational and all the things Momo wishes she could be when she isn't wound up about something as important as _this_. "It's not as scary as you think it is."

It doesn't really set her at ease, but, the air she breathes is easier, lighter, and Momo can't bury her worries and kick it away in the dirt as easily as Shirou-chan thinks she can. "You'll be there, right?"

"Why wouldn't I be?" He gazes at her curiously and there must be a million reasons but none come to mind.

Tears form before she realizes it, and with a laugh of disbelief, Momo wipes it away, not caring if her face is temporarily stained by ice cream, there's a handkerchief in her pocket, she'll use that and dry her tears too. "Okay then." Momo smiles, and it's such a relief that her body feels like it's made of jelly, wobbly and shaky and oh-so-_giddy_. "So, it'll be you and me, forever, right?"

"Forever." He agrees easily, like plucking daisy petals apart, murmuring _so don't worry so much._

At sixteen, her fears are kept at bay just like that.

At twenty-six, Momo wondered why she wanted to keep someone like him around.

* * *

_a/n. Let me know what you think? :D I'm not sure when I'll update it, but the next chapter will be Karin-centric._


End file.
